Earlier this month, Morales filed a request with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to prosecute Israel for alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza.

More than 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority of them innocent civilians — including hundreds of children — have been killed during Israel's three-week war against Hamas and other militants who have launched thousands of rockets into Israel. Another 7,000 Palestinians have been wounded, and at least 400,000 displaced. Israeli forces have bombed homes, hospitals, clinics, schools, mosques, UN shelters, playgrounds and Gaza's only power plant.

In one of the latest attacks to shock the world's conscience, at least 20 refugees seeking safety and shelter in a UN-run school in Jabalia were killed by Israeli tank shelling. Israeli officials said they were responding to militant fire originating near the school.

"We strongly condemn the disproportionate use of force by Israel in the Gaza Strip, from which large numbers of civilian casualties, including women and children, resulted," the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor responded by calling Brazil a "diplomatic dwarf" and taking to Brazilian television to mock the soccer-obsessed nation's humiliating World Cup elimination loss to Germany.

"Israel's response is perfectly proportioned in accordance with international law," Palmor asserted on Globo's Jornal Nacional TV on Thursday.

"This is not football. In football, when a game ends in a draw, you think it's proportional," Palmor added. "But when it finishes 7-1 it's disproportionate. Sorry to say, but not so in real life and under international law."